Revell Germany VIIC/41 "Atlantic Version" 144:1
 

Picking it up in a couple of days! Can't wait! Too excited!

Just had to share with someone, and my wife just doesn't understand... :03:

LINK TO MY BUILD PICS

:DL

I've got their biggest scale encased in a display case. It's for longevity. I mean mine, my life :D

So I understand.

I've pretty much decided I'll be building the U-297.

Someone needs to build a memorial to that hard luck boat. :cry:

Now, for the research. There are some great pictures of her out there; full port and starboard sides out of the water, but my IT dept. at work blocks many of them.

Just have to do it at home.

EDIT: Turns out these pics are of another boat, :-(

If you really like U-boat you should build a bigger scale model of it and preserve it. :DL. I mean from the sound you seem to be quite dedicated with building it.

Here's mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VBSI3MYG_Y

In my youth I was a fairly skilled modeller, intermediate with a few advanced skill thrown in. The only ship model I ever built was the USS Ranger, and it was a poor job, believe me.

Cars, planes, HO scale trains and various military vehicles were my thing. My favorite being a 1/8 scale '32 Ford Coupe, until my 8 yr. old cousin rolled it down the stairs while I was at school. :damn:

Sold everything when I joined the Navy. Built an M1 Abrahms about 18 years ago for my father. It turned out very nice. Built nothing but model rockets, a couple of wooden ship models, and a small scale Space Battleship Yamato since that time.

So this model will be a chance to shake the rust off my skills, re-stock the modelling kit, and test out some new skills prior to finding a 1:72 model to build.

Hey, the wife's always saying I need another hobby. :rotfl2:

:DL

Oh after this 1/144 done do get a bigger U-boat and protect it. I got a feeling from your story you're not a bad modeler at all.

PS: I just take a look at 1:144 U boat model kit. It's not as small as I thought it would be. Looks quite detailed in fact. Don't forget to post pictures of yours.

9681.12 meters. I suppose they could build a pier out to the shelf for it in Hawaii. The draft is gonna be a bit much, methinks.

Anyway, just started on it last night by opening up the free flood vents with my Dremmel.

I'm leery about opening up the lower MBT vents. It'll make those areas quite thin, and my thick irish fingers will crush it for sure.

I may drill those out if I can find a bit that incredibly small. Hmm.... hot wire perhaps?

Sorry for thinking out loud... Pics tomorrow or Friday.

EDIT: Added a link to my build pics in the first post.

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/9...g0940df.th.jpg http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5...g0942mx.th.jpg http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8858/img0951u.th.jpg http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/228/img0952ry.th.jpg

This is the kit.

The kit cost $28.00 and change with tax at Rider's Hobby Shop in Grand Rapids. Oh, how I love this place.

Edit: I should say first, that the kit is perfectly buildable right out of the box, and will give the builder a fine, though generic version of the type. It is a high quality kit, surprisingly so. /edit

The hull is surprisingly detailed for the scale, though the kit has the same flaws as the 1/72 scale. Various vents wrong shape/location, anchor well misplaced and too deep, Peri/Uzo bases quite basic, etc.

The rest of the parts are quite clean with almost no flashing except on the railings, which I won't be using anyway. The rails on the 1/72 kit are too thick, you can imagine how bad they are for the 1/144 version. I'll be building jigs to bend and solder wire for a new wintergarden and other rails.

I am having trouble finding photo-etched parts for this model, though I have found some for the standard VIIC, many of which should be appropriate. We'll see how that goes.

I'd be remiss if I didn't stop to thank Siara for his stickied thread on building his 1/72 scale model. It gave me the impetus to get to work on my own. Tips/tricks learned from reading his thread have already stood me in good stead on this project. Thank you, sir.

LINK TO MY BUILD PICS

Opening the limber holes and other free flooding areas


http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3...g0953os.th.jpg http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/5...g0954nw.th.jpg http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8...0948iuo.th.jpg http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3397/img0956x.th.jpg

Using my ancient Dremel, with a new cable attachment. The old one had rusted and snapped a couple of years ago. I'm not sure what I am going to do with the diesel exhaust port shown in the first photo, between and above the two lines of open holes.

There are, at least, 4 types of exhaust ports used on VIICs, and I am having serious trouble finding any photographs of any VIIC/41s from the batch to which my subject (U-297) belongs, let alone of the boat itself.


http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8136/img0946jz.th.jpg http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5122/img0958b.th.jpg http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/269/img0959ve.th.jpg

Didn't want to use the dremel on the aft holes. I was afraid to thin this area out too much, so chose to drill and file the holes instead. I have no pin vise, so I used a trick learned while reading Siara's build thread. An X-acto knife works very well with a small enough drill bit. 1/32" in this case.

Still have a little cleaning up to do, as the first pic shows. Can't seem to locate my needle files. Probably still packed in a box somewhere. Don't want to just start scraping with the x-acto knife.


http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/658/img0962uk.th.jpg http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/8206/img0961y.th.jpg http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/1585/img0950m.th.jpg

I'm not sure what to do with these areas yet. The aft floods are the wrong shape/size/locations. Any grinding there will make it terribly fragile.

The bow floods should be oval shaped, and the saddle tank flood vents need to be opened and grates fashioned from stretched sprue. Each piece as thin as a human hair. That should be ALOT of fun. :nope:

The drainage area above the saddle tanks (the dark, horizontal line in the above photo) needs to be opened up and supports glued in place. More on that later.

Enough for now. Today I will order the only photo-etch set I could find for VIIC in 1/144 scale. Hopefully I'll be done with modifications on the hull by the time it arrives.

LINK TO MY BUILD PICS

There are a couple but they are quite expensive:
http://www.megahobby.com/1/144scale_1.aspx

...been thinking about building one of these (This is the older version with the 8.8 cm gun) my self to go with my other 1:144 scale subs (Type XXI Wilhelm Bauer, Type XXIII, Type 206A)

Yep, I'm looking at the Griffon Models set for the VIIC. Good thing today is payday, the wife might not have a coniption when I order it.

:salute:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/7600/limberflub.png


Had a minor dremel tool accident. Made one of the vents look like the above pic. Never perform touchy grinding operations while watching a comedy.

Putty alone wouldn't hold, so I glued a piece of quarter-round styrene stock to the back side, and will try again when I get home from work.

Picked up some styrene sheet stock last night to form the pressure hull. Will firm up some plans for that over the weekend. :salute:

The patch on the aggressive grinding fiasco worked like a charm. Pics on the way.

Ordered the Griffon Models VIIC photo-etch set Saturday. Will pick it up in a couple of weeks. I will decide what to do with the lower flood vents when it arrives.

Also ordered Anatomy of the Ship: Type VII U-boat by David Westwood. Hoping it will give me the info I'm looking for to scratch build the parts needed to complete this project.

If anyone out there has pics of U-boats 292 - 300, or 1271 - 1279 please give me a heads up. I'd love to take a look at them. These are the VIIC/41 boats built at the Bremen-Vagesack Works and pics are extremely hard to come by for any of these boats.

Will post again when the PE set arrives.

I'm reading your building report with great interest, keep on posting! :up:
This will be my next mode, as the Revell VII in 1:72 is unavailable now :(

So far I had no success in finding some pictures. What sources did you look up? It helps if we post them, so we don't check the same ones over and over.

I looked for pics in these books:
- Lakowski: Deutsche U-boote geheim
- Bagnasco: Uboote im 2. Weltkrieg
- Möller/Brack: Enzyklopädie deutscher U-Boote
- Nowarra: German U-boat type VII
- Wiper: Warship Pictorial Kriegsmarine Type VII U-boats

the last book confirms that the mentioned boats were indeed the VII/41s built in Bremen-Vegesack

I'll keep looking!

* SIGH * I've juts lost any excuse I possibly had to avoid opening up some vents and to minimize oil-canning due to the 1/144 scale of this model.

This is AMAZING! Click the picture for a link to his Spanish language site.

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/e...ID_025_039.jpg

Thank you for your interest Penguin. I'll certainly keep 'em coming. :)

All of my research, so far, has been online. I started with Google images, and branched out from there. I've hit all the obvious websites on uboats/modelling, including a couple of german sites. I don't speak german, but have picked up just enough over the years to get the gist of what I'm looking at, given enough time.

The only book I've checked was an online scan of Type VII U-Boats by David Westwood.

The only pic I can confirm from the above batches is one of U-295:

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/8...agele7janv.jpg

The vent pattern below the turm is clearly the Bremen-Vegesack pattern.
(Thank you Dougie Martindale)

The only pic I've found of U-297, is a pic of the bridge area on the surface. The pic shows the correct turm and fittings for a VIIC/41, but I'll have to confirm the kaleun in the pic is that of Wolfgang Aldegarmann.

http://www.uboat.net:8080/media/men/...n_wolfgang.jpg http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/2627/u297.jpg http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg833...jpg&res=medium

EDIT: This is the only pic I could find listed as U-297. The chin is the correct shape, the width and height of the mouth above the chin, the nose appears correct. I'm going to say that this is correct. This pic tells me a bunch about the boat.

The small pic is Kurt Kraker, the 1st officer of U-297. Looks a great deal like the individual on the right.

I'll soon be ordering the booklet on the discovery of the U-297. Hopefully it will have some decent pics of her.

2nd Edit: The book arrived! While not as helpful as I'd hoped, it has cleared up a few questions I had.
The picture above is indeed u297, but the Kaleun is actually the shorter figure at the right and Kraker is wearing the peaked cap! The author confirmed this with Aldegarmann's widow.

It also led me to German Warships 1815 - 1945 Volume 2 by Groner. This book reportedly has the exact scuppers/limber holes used by this batch of VIIC/41s! Keeping my fingers crossed.

That guy does fantastic work! He must have a hell of alot of time on his hands. He's not in prison is he?:haha: Osmium keep the pics comeing! I love threads like this:yep:

Check out this site about a diving expedition to U-297: http://newfrontierdiving.com/u297.html
The guy here is the same guy as in your pic:
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2646/wolfgangkn.jpg
The caption also says it's Wolfgang Aldegarmann.

And I found a report of a crew member of U-300, though only in German:
http://www.kbismarck.com/u-boot/ugas...hschmiedel.htm

There are two pics of her sinking on this site, but they are grainy pics taken against the sun, so not too many details to see there.

Thank you so much for the link to the kbismark.com site. I found this:

http://www.kbismarck.com/u-boot/udea...-lisahally.jpg

While I've seen that pic before, I've never seen the hull numbers listed before! The 2nd from the left is listed as U-293!

From the left: U-802 (Type IXC/40), U-293 (Type VIIC/41), U-1105 and U-826 (both Type VIIC). Note that all 3 type VIIs have the atlantic bow.

I cannot seem to open this link from work. Perhaps someone else might have better luck? It supposedly contains more pics of u-297. Thanks!

http://www.ubootwaffe.net/crews/crew...916-06-24Z297Z